The Aldi bug zapper operates off two AA batteries and activates with a button that you must hold in to power up. Surprising it works effectively. It cannot handle a swarm of larger bugs, and large bugs tend to take time to zap away. They get stuck and you have to tap the racket to clear them or they will prevent an effective "zap" for the next pest.

My wife went outside after dark to water some plants on the front porch and I went out with her. Just moving the zapper around her lower body, it killed a minimum of 10 mosquitoes in around 5 seconds.

It's a good feeling to get even for mosquitoes are real hard on my girl. I bought a second zapper for our PC.

I bought this "Bug Gun" as a joke at a novelty shop for $2 many years ago. I now carry it in the PC. Works and is a whole lot of fun!!! You just pull the trigger and the swatter spring releases and hits the bug.

Pax

When an uninvited insect guest gets into our rig, it always goes for the ceiling. First time, I squished it...which was obviously not the thing to do on the light colored ceiling material. Ick!

Mostly we just break out the mini vac and suck 'em up...especially in areas where Mosquitos wait by the door for us to open it!

By the way, we have found that those Thermacell units really do keep the bugs away from you. We have two now. One is the lantern type (just an LED light) that we keep on the picnic table or chair table, and the other is the one you can wear on your belt when walking the dogs or hiking. We leave that one by the coach door when not walking with it and it does a great job of keeping the bugs away from the entrance.

It was fun to see that others have found and use these things. We saw one during one of our RV club camping trips...my wife fell in love with it and wanted one. I bought one, gave it to her as a present...she said "It is the most romantic gift I've gotten from you in our 52 years of marriage!" Hmmmmm. That must say something about my romantic ablilties.

She killed a couple of yellow jackets with it the other day and got really excited. It's good to find something she really likes. Now if I could just find one of those little bug guns we would make a real pair.

Read the DD battery suggestion on several Harbor Freight blogs/sites. Not sure as to why, but would guess that the components may be different in the two designs. Your Aldi bug zapper is likely a better quality model. When one of our HF zappers takes early retirement I'll take it apart to try and get an idea as to how it was made. Something along the lines of a transistor, transformer, capacitor, and resistor. Off the shelf items that the builder recognized would work; components unlikely to have been made for the purpose of building a zapper. But what the hey, they're fun. And effective.

Since my initial post, we are up to 5 zappers now. I keep two in the PC, two in the main house for use around at home, and one in inside near the garage door where many mosquitoes tend to get in and hang around.